Tesla Troubles Mount As Musk Goes Full Rogue – CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

---

Like a rogue elephant, Elon Musk is stomping around, braying like a demented jackass, and embracing authoritarian tropes. Perhaps his worst offense was giving what appeared to be a Nazi salute at the recent inauguration of the so-called president of the United States. That one act incensed a wide number of current and potential customers, particularly in Europe, where sales of Tesla automobiles have plummeted since the ketamine addict who is the world’s richest person endorsed the neo-Nazi party.

Musk pooh-poohs his ketamine usage, but for the uninitiated, here is how the DEA describes the drug: “Ketamine produces hallucinations. It distorts perceptions of sight and sound and makes the user feel disconnected and not in control. Ketamine may cause unwanted side effects such as: agitation, depression, cognitive difficulties, unconsciousness, and amnesia. Involuntarily rapid eye movement, dilated pupils, salivation, tear secretions, and stiffening of the muscles, possible nausea.” This person should be nowhere near sensitive information and yet he has been handed the keys to the federal government by the clown posing as the president and told to dismantle it as rapidly as possible. His unhinged behavior is having a strong negative effect on the company he is too busy to run.

Tesla Toxicity In Europe

According to Wired, in January, Sławomir Nitrasoland, the sports and tourism minister for Poland, lobbied for a Tesla boycott. “There is no justification for any reasonable Pole to continue purchasing Teslas,” he said. In Germany, where Musk has caused outrage by endorsing far-right political party Alternative for Germany, going so far as to appear as a surprise video guest at the party’s national election campaign launch last month, several companies have cut ties with Tesla.

Drugstore chain Rossmann, with 4,700 stores across Europe, has replaced Tesla in its electric fleet with other EV brands, citing the “incompatibility” of its corporate values and Musk’s ideology. German energy company LichtBlick said on LinkedIn post, “We are pulling the plug on Tesla vehicles in our fleet.” Kevin Lütje, the firm’s real estate head, told Wired, “Elon Musk’s support of Donald Trump and his recommendation to vote for a right wing populist and right wing extremist party … is in no way compatible with LichtBlick’s values.” He stated that “climate protection and electromobility are extremely important to us, but in the future we will be relying on providers other than Tesla.”

Tim Kraaijvanger of the Netherlands is the founder of Tesla360.nl, a Dutch everything-Tesla site. He recently sold his Model Y and bought a Polestar instead. “While Musk might get away with a [Nazi-like] salute in some parts of the world, European markets reject such behavior,” Kraaijvanger said. “World War Two still casts a long shadow.” He recently sold his Tesla Model Y for half what he paid for it but said he accepted the loss because he no longer wanted to be associated with that brand and its lunatic leader. Recently an English advocacy group that calls itself Led by Donkeys and Germany’s Center for Political Beauty beamed an image of Musk making his Nazi-like salute onto Tesla’s gigafactory in Berlin, with the word “Heil” projected next to the lit Tesla logo. “This is who Elon Musk really is. Don’t buy a Tesla,” the group urged its followers.

Tesla sales are in free fall in Europe and the UK right now. Last month, Norway recorded a 37.9 percent slump. Tesla sales in France fell by 63.4 percent; in Spain, Tesla sales plummeted by 75.4 percent. Driving a Tesla on public roads is becoming increasingly problematic in Europe. Social media is rife with images of Teslas vandalized with swastikas and expletives. Dealerships are also being targeted. Vandals sprayed graffiti on a Tesla car showroom in The Hague in early February, defacing the building with “No to Nazis” and anti-fascist slogans. Startup crowdfunded group Everyone Hates Elon has been distributing anti-Tesla stickers in London, while left-wing outlet Novara Media is reporting that “hundreds” of Tesla owners have returned to their parked EVs to find them defaced with hard-to-remove roundels featuring a grinning Musk plastered with a Hitler-aping toothbrush mustache and the request not to “buy a Swastikar.”

Disgruntled Tesla Owners

Some Tesla owners are also adding “I Bought This Before I Knew Elon Was Crazy” bumper stickers. “I have seen massive uplift in sales across Europe,” Matthew Hiller of Mad Puffer Stickers told Wired. “Leading the way are buyers from France, Norway, and the UK. I used to want a Tesla until Elon turned into a full-on fascist,” claims Hiller, who adds there are a “lot of disgruntled Tesla owners out there” and claims to have sold thousands of sticker sets around the world. “I went so far as to test drive a Tesla in 2023, but at that time, [Musk’s] purchase of Twitter was complete, and I saw what he was doing to the platform. Skewing the algorithm to favor alt-right voices, promoting disinformation, banning people he didn’t like. Using his influence to wade into politics really turned me off buying a Tesla. It’s a MAGA hat on wheels.”

Musk’s “salute” boosted his sales tremendously, Hiller said. “It has been a sustained 500 sales a day since the salute. That moment broke through all the usual Elon noise. Even the people who only casually pay attention to what is happening in the government woke up at that moment and were like ‘Holy shit, what have we done?’”

Tesla shareholder Karen Róbertsdóttir of Reykjavik, Iceland, said: “The Tesla groups over here in Iceland used to never have the sort of ‘I can’t buy a Tesla because of Elon’ stuff you’d see in the States. But now it’s everywhere, and the people I talk to elsewhere in Europe are seeing the same thing. I’ve defended you guys so much over the years, and you make great products, but even I can’t stick up for you anymore,” she said on her YouTube channel. A long-time Tesla stockholder, one of her resolutions calling on Tesla’s board to release a succession plan for Musk and other “key persons” whose behavior could create a risk for the company and shareholders was put to a vote at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in 2023, “When people look at this company,” she said at the meeting, “they see the company as a synonym for its CEO.” The board recommended rejecting the resolution and it was duly voted down.

There are many reasons for Tesla’s waning fortunes in Europe, but Musk’s steady descent from real-life Tony Stark to MAGA power broker seems to be a key reason for Tesla’s current precipitous fall from grace, Wired suggests. Tesla sales dropped 13 percent across the whole European Union in 2024, according to data from the industry body ACEA, and in many key markets the fall is still steeper. According to the German Federal Motor Transport Authority, Tesla registered only 1,277 new cars in Germany in January, a year-on-year drop of 59.5 percent.

Embarrassed

A recent survey by Dutch news outlet EenVandaag got responses from 432 Tesla drivers. Some “31 percent are either contemplating selling their car or have already done so,” the survey found. Forty percent of owners felt embarrassed to own a Tesla. “By any measure, these are statistics that no car company wants to own,” Wired says. And yet the Great and Powerful Musk seems utterly unconcerned by all the negativity swirling around him. Maybe it’s the ketamine, or maybe he is just drunk with power like so many others in Assington, DC, at the moment. The headline to the Wired story says it all: “Elon Musk’s Toxicity Could Spell Disaster for Tesla.”

Elon has more zeros in his bank account than anyone ever in the history of the world, but he still puts his pants on one leg at a time. Sadly, he shows absolutely no interest in preserving Tesla. What a waste of a company that was once the envy of the world.